{"id":1712,"date":"2013-04-10T18:22:22","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T17:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zoomjapan.info\/wp\/?p=1712"},"modified":"2016-01-19T16:48:58","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T16:48:58","slug":"no10-statement-the-fate-of-the-herbivores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/2013\/04\/10\/no10-statement-the-fate-of-the-herbivores\/","title":{"rendered":"No10 [Statement] The fate of the herbivores"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"no1003\"<\/a>If the Japanese are not having enough children, it\u2019s their own fault. At least, that\u2019s the opinion of one mother.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Watanabe Junko has been married to a Scot, Richard Dawson, for five years and is the mother of two children: Alexandre and Rika. Her husband, from Edinburgh, is the director of an international audit firm in Tokyo. The family lives in a comfortable flat in Minato in the Japanese capital. Alexandre, aged 9, is a little tornado. Between racing around at break neck speed he bends over and kisses his little sister, Rika, just 9 months old and sitting on her mother\u2019s lap. \u201cHe\u2019s always like that,\u201d says his mother apologetically. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to channel his energy\u201d. Little Rika watches attentively. Watanabe Junko, who comes from Nagano, exudes gentleness and kindness. She likes spending time with her children and admits sheisn’t in a rush to resume her work as a secretary. “I feel so happy while I\u2019m with my babies,\u201d she smiles. At 39, Junko defines herself as an old mum”. “In Japan, I\u2019m already considered quite old to have children, even though today the trend is for an increasing number of Japanese women to want to have studied and started a career before having children. They want to work outside the house more, and become more independent financially. When they realise that they want a child they are too old, or are too involved in their work, and it\u2019s hard for women to reconcile their professional careers with family life in Japan,\u201d she continues. On the question of childcare, Junko has her own idea to help young mothers with too much on their hands. \u201cI think we should create a community that allows us to help each other. For example, I live in Minato. The mayor here has created a support group, and the way it works is ingenious: experienced mothers, who live in the area, take part for 800 yen per hour. Its very affordable when compared to the cost of baby-sitting services. It\u2019s a godsend for mothers who can\u2019t count on their parents\u2019 help as they live too far away\u201d. Watanabe Junko considers herself privileged in her professional life. \u201cI was very lucky, because my company takes great care of mothers. For example, we are allowed a year and a half of maternity leave. We can also choose to work part-time or to do some of the work from home until the children are 12. It\u2019s ideal,\u201d she confirms with a smile. According to Junko, there is only one reason for the drop in Japanese birth rates: Japanese men. \u201cWell, especially the soshoku kei danshi who reject their wives, the couple and marriage,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The soshoku kei danshi defines a generation of young Japanese, aged between 20 and 35, that doesn\u2019t want to devote life to a professional career. So they avoid responsibilities or any competitive situations and demonstrate very little ambition. Their aim is to take advantage of life, earn little and spend little and take care only of themselves. For them it\u2019s just a case of making the most of time as it passes. Soshoku kei danshi, translated as \u201cherbivores\u201d in Europe, are also uninterested in love and sex. Fukasawa Maki, author and journalist, employed the word for the first time in 2006. \u201cIn Japan, the word for sex literally means flesh,\u201d she says in an article. That is why I called these men herbivores, because they\u2019re not interested in flesh\u201d. It\u2019s estimated that 60% of Japanese men between 20 and 34 years of age identify with this lifestyle. According to a poll of 500 young Japanese, taken by Lifenet Seimei Insurance two years ago, three quarters of the people interviewed were concerned about this new trend. \u201cThe soshoku kei danshi are everywhere now,\u201d says Watanabe. \u201cThey are very feminine, and wait for women pick them up, which they don\u2019t want to do. It might be due to the way they were brought up by their mothers, who pampered them, and to the absence of a father, who was uninterested in young children. On their part, women are gaining in independence: they don\u2019t need men financially anymore. So meeting someone is much harder. In general, I believe that it\u2019s hard to have a relationship with a Japanese man nowadays. Japanese men don\u2019t like strong personalities. Of course, young women don\u2019t pose that problem, but as they grow older and start to assert themselves, things get harder. And past a certain age, Japanese women have a lot of difficulty finding a husband. It\u2019s much easier with foreigners! They like independent women better,\u201d she states with a touch of bitterness.<\/p>\n

J.F.<\/p>\n

SEXUALITY Don\u2019t touch!<\/p>\n

Despite the definition given by the Japanese Sexology Society, \u201csexless\u201d does not apply to a specific situation. It means not having any consensual intercourse or sexual contact for over a month. But this definition goes back 17 years. In a poll carried out in 2007, which asked what length of time should lapse before the term \u201csexless\u201d was applicable, approximately 30% of the people questioned replied six months. And so the severity of the \u201csexless\u201d problem progresses.<\/p>\n

O. N.<\/p>\n

Photo: J\u00e9r\u00e9mie Souteyrat<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If the Japanese are not having enough children, it\u2019s their own fault. At least, that\u2019s the opinion of one mother.\u00a0 Watanabe Junko has been married […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1713,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-1712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-focus","tag-focus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1712"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2150,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions\/2150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}